“Virtually unrecognized by the media, and unacknowledged by state government, has been the role of the explosion of oil and gas drilling in the Uinta Basin about 180 miles east of Salt Lake City. Fugitive emissions inherent in oil and gas drilling have created a severe air pollution problem in Vernal, the main Utah town in the Uinta Basin. In the winter, Vernal has particulate pollution as high as Salt Lake City but can also have ozone higher even than Los Angeles - a double whammy unique to Vernal. And now our "dirty energy" governor is heavily promoting extreme fossil fuels in Utah - the lower 48 states' primary deposits of oil shale and tar sands. I suppose those glamorous photos of the Alberta Tar Sands eco-nightmare are just too alluring for our governor to pass up. Tar sands and oil shale would seal a fate for Salt Lake City of perpetual, doomsday air pollution.”--Truth-Out

The Long View

Salt Lake City takes a deep look at the controversial Utah state agency that sells off state lands in the name of the children.

“Few Utahns, let alone schoolchildren, know about the School & Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), an agency that has just one goal: to make money for the state’s K-12 constituency. In 2013, the work of SITLA manifested itself in around $40,000 for every school in the state. Utah’s cash-starved public education system needs the money, so criticizing how it’s won can be politically sensitive.
But as the impacts of Utah’s ever-growing population take their toll on the environment, SITLA’s quest for money has taken it to the feet of the energy industry’s most controversial and resource-intensive extraction methods, like oil shale and tar sands. And as the state’s air grows dirtier and water supplies dwindle, some question whether the good SITLA does for the schoolchildren of today is damning the schoolchildren of tomorrow.”--Salt Lake City Weekly